


27 overexposures

by myoue



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Mild Kink, Photography, victor misuses english, yuuri marries his celebrity crush in every universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-09 02:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11659455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myoue/pseuds/myoue
Summary: Victor was made to be photographed. If anyone has to be the one snapshotting him, Yuuri figures it might as well be him.





	27 overexposures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foreverautumn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverautumn/gifts).



> happy very very belated birthday foreverautumn ... !!
> 
> so sorry for the delay.. i hope ur still able to enjoy this strange photographer yuuri and normal skater victor story. it gets aaaaa LITTLE suggestive (kink??) near the end but i think.... it is still teen rating and not mature.. who knows
> 
> also i know nothing about photography. i might've come up with this story from watching [daoko's dear goodbye sayonara](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw1Imhnw5Yg&ab_channel=daoko_jp)

“Now I know what it is you all want to hear,” Victor says on national television in front of millions of people tuned in to watch what should be a solemn retirement speech by the greatest competitive figure skater of the last decade.

But while he is indeed holding up the last freshly won gold medal for all to see secured on a blue ribbon around his neck, his palm is turned inwards, covering up what should be the culmination of the pride and joy Victor’s supposed to be showing off.

He smiles because there’s never a time in his life where everything he does isn’t planned down to the last detail. “Yuuri and I, we had a little bit of a tiff as you all know. But none of you have to worry! We kissed and made out.” His breath turns wistful, letting a lovelorn sigh escape the confines of his chest like a weight carried for years and years having finally lifted off him. “That’s all.”

“Err, pardon, Mr. Nikiforov. You mean kissed and _made up_ , correct?”

His smile only gets wider, the flare of the ring off his finger reflecting straight into the lens of the newscamera in the most terribly ostentatious display of showmanship. “Right, right. That’s what I meant.”

The reporter nods, features worrying over whether or not they can air this on live television, but gets right back to it. “Yes. And about your retirement…”

“Hang on, is that a ring?” Another reporter pushes forward, shoving a mic into his face.

But Victor is already gone, walking away with a laugh so charming that the swarm of the incoming crowd and screaming fans practically beg him for more. Of course, Victor knows that if he keeps his mouth shut and keeps walking forward, they’ll part willingly out of his way. He’s earned it after all.

-

Yuuri holds in his hands the fruit of his labours—his most precious collection of photos developed on plastic film. These ones were taken at last year’s Juniors in Yoyogi, Tokyo, and is where Victor happened to be selected again this year. Both times Yuuri gets permission to travel here by train. And this was all before Yuuri knows to turn on the flash on his camera.

The thing is: the disposable cameras he tends to use aren’t very good at capturing motion, the zoom function can only zoom in so far, and he doesn't know exactly what a shot will look like until it's developed weeks down the road. Victor’s long dreamlike hair has a life of its own and covers his face more often than not, and that’s probably the thing Yuuri is disappointed most by than anything else.

He’s mindlessly shuffling through the film in his hands, figuring he’ll wait to hear Victor’s scores before he leaves to head home.

“They’re blurry,” someone says over Yuuri while he’s hunched so far forward. He’s at a near thirty degree angle so whoever’s talking to him is leaning just as far over him.

The stack of square photos are pressed inhumanly fast to his body.

If not for the fact that these pictures are very dear and deeply personal to Yuuri, the plainness of the matter is whoever can see them at all will know immediately they’re all of one specific person, that Yuuri has been staring almost trancelike at them, and—

“V-V-V-Vi… Victor… Victor Niki—?”

“Oh? Were they of me?”

Once the voice properly registers in Yuuri’s brain and getting over the hump of improbability of the situation, Yuuri’s sure it's him without even looking. He can recognize that voice from three closed doors over on a staticky television with unsteady signal. The only thing he doubts is where it’s directed at, surely not Yuuri, surely he's got it wrong.

But Victor Nikiforov in the flesh drops down to the bench beside him anyway, uncaring of the heart attack he’s just instilled in Yuuri, immediately bringing up one knee covered in black stretchy costume garb from his last performance to lay his chin against. His flowing silver hair frames the cheesy smile he gives, and it’s out of his face this time, at least partially, covering just one side of his forehead and curving around his left eye.

Yuuri's heart is caught in his throat, but Victor priming him for an answer has him blurting, “Yeah—They’re of you. Sort of.” He admits it under his breath, quiet enough that he hopes Victor doesn’t hear him at all.

But Victor, unfortunately, hears every word. “Oh! Are you a photographer?”

“Sort of…”

“Sort of a photographer?”

“I—uh…” Yuuri looks down at his hands. “I just came here to take pictures. I’m no photographer.”

“Oh.” Victor seems a little disappointed.

Yuuri doesn’t bring up the fact that he’s still only in middle school. “Sorry, they’re not very good, either.”

“On the contrary, I think they’re rather, ah, what’s the word? Unique?” Victor’s gaze falls to where Yuuri has his hands and the photos pressed to himself, like he has laser eyes and can still see the picture through the back. “It’s hard to photograph, err, moving targets, right?”

It has Yuuri curling his fingers over the photos as much as possible. “It… it is…” Yuuri answers, unable to look Victor properly in the eye, shaky at best, wandering at worst. “Unique…” he repeats, unconvinced, taking one hand off the photos to scratch at his head nervously. “You could say that.”

“I mean that in a good way!”

“S-Sure…”

This isn’t at all how he thought he would meet Junior World Champion Victor for the first time.

In fact, Junior World Champion Victor looks back up to him likes he's decidedly amused. “I look better when you can’t see my face anyway, huh?” he says offhandedly.

But even though Yuuri is nervous as all hell, trembling with Victor so near him, his head snaps up after hearing that, shaking back and forth. “That’s—! That’s not true...”

“I think I look more... honest that way?” Victor taps a finger against his cheek, rather unconcerned with Yuuri’s waving hands and desperation to reject his claims.

“Honest?” Yuuri questions, flabbergasted, not sure what that means.

“...Yes?” Victor doesn’t look like he fully knows what he means, either. “Sorry, my English isn’t very good.”

Yuuri frowns.

Well. That may be so. But it still sounds like Victor’s suggesting the back of him looks better than the front of him—for supposedly artistic reasons. And so, Yuuri can’t help the slightly upset look he gives Victor. It feels a little unfair, even if he’s only talking about himself, or like he’s trying to give Yuuri a pass for having such crappy photography.

Yuuri doesn’t quite believe him.

But maybe Victor really just doesn’t know what he’s saying. After all, he’s only a stranger. And his English is bad.

Yuuri’s photos are a product of countless unfortunate happenstances, a little too honest if you ask Yuuri, always clicking the button too early or too late or fumbling and not pressing it at all, or when Victor’s in the middle of coming down from a jump but never at the crux of the jump itself. So often Yuuri finds himself getting distracted, entrancing himself with the sight of Victor’s ebb and flow on the ice, too busy to take in what Victor’s showing him until it’s too late.

When Victor sees his expression, he’s quick to correct himself.

“Hey, hey, let me explain, okay?”

He tilts his head, poking out an index finger from atop his knee to point towards Yuuri, wiggling it around like there’s a point to be made.

“I don’t want people looking at my face, that’s all. I skate so everyone can see my _body_. Or, I mean, how my body tells a story. My face is part of it, but it’s not the focus. In your pictures, I only saw ten of them, but I could see myself from... your point of view, let’s say? Some of them are a little blurry or you can’t actually see me much but there’s so much... _emotion_. You watch me so intently, and that’s what I want.”

His finger retracts, mumbling something to himself like “ _Hm, yeah, that sounds about right_.” His face scrunches up, seemingly wanting to footnote his ideas like they’re only theories and not quite conclusions.

But either way, Yuuri’s a little taken aback, having never thought Victor would be thinking of all this of his skating.

The photographer is supposed to be invisible. At least, that’s what Yuuri thinks it should be. They build a reputation behind the lens of a blinding flash. They’re there but only temporarily. They’re not the focus, they're in none of the pictures, they’re not the point of them.

“That’s…” Yuuri nearly bites his tongue, trying to compute everything Victor says, before tracing back to one particular thing. “You saw _ten_ of them? Of my...”

Victor counts one, two, three, all the way to ten, on his fingers. “Yep, ten.”

It has Yuuri feeling suddenly itchy, like there’s something on his face or a dirty spot on his neck. A hole burns through him, running down the cheeks of his face, all the way down his arms, to the tips of his fingers that clutch around the plastic developed photos. Agonizingly, he can’t move them to scratch at that itch when they’re holding onto the very things he wants to keep Victor from seeing again. He wants to ask just _how long_ Victor had been standing behind him.

As if not understanding any of this, Victor continues staring at him, lazy. His head lolls on his knee, like there’s no where else he has to go, or would rather be than right here in the stands, his hair slipping inevitably over his face strand by strand, a little more like the curtain of a final show closing, letting him feign sleep.

“Also, you’re too young to be a paparazzi, and all their photos of me look terrible,” Victor says. He pretends to snooze, closing his eyes before pouting his lips outward like a fish.

“I’m—I’m not a paparazzi!” Yuuri protests.

“Too cute to be one then,” Victor reasons.

Yuuri’s words garble in his throat, only able to come out as a stuttered, strained, “ _N-N-No…_ ” He’s unsure how exactly to answer that without admitting to one thing or another.

But Victor lets out a little bell-like laugh, hasn’t stopped smiling, hasn’t stopped looking at Yuuri through the curtain of his hair.

“No?” Victor laughs. “Not too cute to be a paparazzi?” His cheeks puff up, like he’s not used to getting things wrong. His fingers tap against his leg, unhurriedly, to the beat of some tune that Yuuri can’t hear.

Victor, in this natural pose, coy and unobtrusive. Up close. Too close. Smiling without need of the responsibility to. All of it has Yuuri rendered completely incapable of a proper response.

For Victor to be sixteen years old—precocious and too young himself to be rising so fast up the ranks in the world—kindness hasn’t left him yet. He’s yet uncorrupted. If Victor had given Yuuri a single disapproving look, a slight shake of the head, a click of his teeth, or taken one look at Yuuri’s photos and given a single scathing comment about the unflattering angles or the creepy stalkerish nature of them, it still would have been the highlight of Yuuri’s day.

He doesn’t deny Victor, or rather _can’t_.

Yuuri reaches reach a hand out, as slowly and steadily as he can so as not to be too much of a surprise, but he can already see Victor’s eyes widen, even as he remains perfectly still, wondering curiously what’s coming next.

Yuuri gulps, letting Victor’s kindness and comments get to his head, washing over any doubt he has that Victor will allow him to do this.

He moves to tuck the soft sheet of Victor’s hair back behind his ear, carefully and softly, unintentionally brushing the tips of his fingers along Victor’s cheekbone in the process. It’s a gentle tingle even for Yuuri, that has Victor blinking so suddenly he actually twitches a little, like a cat startled by a hand on its body but not wholly discomforted by it.

Yuuri isn’t sure why he does this, just that he does. Because Victor is beautiful. Because he’s so kind. Because he makes Yuuri’s small tentative heart pound indiscriminately with the soul he pours into his skating and everything else he does.

He can’t let things remain like this. He has to let Victor know that while he may think his body is the star of the show, his face and all the sensitive expressions they depict are more important to Yuuri.

It frustrates him every time he can’t quite get it, every time he knows a shot doesn’t come out quite right, when he misses a perfect angle by a hair, or due to Victor’s hair, or because a stranger had gotten in the way, or because Yuuri’s thumb had gotten in the way. And no matter what the point of skating is supposed to be about or what Victor personally believes, Yuuri’s feelings can’t simply be swept away on what he should and shouldn’t want to see in Victor in his photography.

Victor doesn’t say anything when Yuuri lifts his other hand off the stack of photos in his lap to reach for the camera tied around his wrist, a disposable Utsurun-desu that he buys from the store for 1380 yen because it’s all his teenage budget can afford.

“Can I… um, can I…”

“Sure.”

Victor’s response is strangely immediate, his eyes searching and curious, his face so clear and honest and open with his hair tucked back and out of the way.

For interacting with a so-called paparazzi, Victor is so readily compliant. Perhaps he’d known where this was going to go all along when he’d presented himself to a kid with a cheap camera in his hands.

He doesn’t have to do much in preparation either, his teeth already dentist-white and eyes crinkled from smiling. It’s so unfair. Victor’s so used to having the camera trained on him, having people’s hands on him.

But this right here when Victor smiles, he doesn’t have to practice or prepare for it. This Victor that’s baring himself to just anyone he happens to come across in the audience, this seeming blend of performance and real person—it’s a privilege that no real paparazzi ever gets to see. Yuuri’s sure of it.

Or at least, that’s how Yuuri feels when he holds the lightweight camera up against his face, squinting through the tiny magnified lens, focusing everything he has on memorizing the detail that he sees through it the best he can—the smooth shapely outline of Victor’s pristine model-like pose, one knee drawn up, hunched against it, irresistibly beautiful and effortlessly casual all at once.

For once, the shot is crystal clear. And Victor stares back at him, unobscured by his hair, almost like he’s looking right through the camera at Yuuri. It has Yuuri’s heart jumping, flipping over itself.

“Cheese!”

Yuuri presses down on the button, hearing a hollow click. There’s no flash even though it's turned on.

But Victor relaxes, his shoulders and his arms coming down to lay at his ankle even if he’s still resting his chin on his knee and regarding Yuuri half-sideways. “How was that?”

Yuuri sets the camera down to his lap, nodding, still feeling the urge to hide himself behind the lens once more. “Ah, good… it was good.”

He'd already counted up the last of his twenty-seven total shots taken earlier, so this one was… for Yuuri’s eyes and Yuuri’s eyes only.

He wishes he could’ve had the foresight to save room for one more picture in his small roll of film. He wishes his hands weren’t so clumsy.

But he returns a smile, edging somewhere between gratefulness and a longing that this moment could last longer than it will. His fingers clutch around the camera and the thick folds of his pants, burning the image of Victor sitting here beside him into his retinas, allowing himself just this once not to tear his eyes away from his childhood love.

“Thank you,” Yuuri says, a little bit sheepish.

“Mmhm!”

Victor gives him one last smile as well before he has to get up and bound down the steps towards a coach in a dark fedora that has his arms crossed and a snarl that could be seen from a mile away.

“I’ll see you around!” Victor calls behind him. “I look forward to more of your pictures!”

At the bottom, Victor’ll get what looks like a stern talking to but he’ll only shrug his shoulders, and Yuuri will receive a brief look from Victor’s coach before they make their way back.

And just like that, Victor’s gone.

He doesn’t get to tell Victor how beautiful he is.

He doesn’t even get to _show_ Victor how beautiful he is.

Later on when Junior World Champion Victor becomes Senior World Champion, winning another gold on his very first attempt as part of the senior division, he’ll be interviewed on numerous television programs and local news outlets. He’ll flip his trademarked ponytailed hair back behind him, crossing his legs on a cushy sofa that he sinks right into, and leaning forward to press his chin into the palm of his hand. The smile he draws is reminiscent, but not quite the same as what Yuuri remembers.

And in response to some question in Russian that Yuuri isn’t able to catch, Victor will say in accented English, winking right at the camera, “Every wedding has to have a cute photographer, right?”

-

There’s beauty in everything (and everyone, when someone asks Yuuri later what his favourite thing to shoot is and he extrapolates to say ‘people’, despite his subject matter consistently remaining a single person). To keep a piece of a moment, of time, immortalized forever, is a privilege of humankind—and also for Yuuri, a mere mortal without any real skills or talent besides the ability to capture something intangible and keep it in his own hands.

But he doesn’t want to be associated with the crudeness of paparazzi, nor does he want to sell his pictures to news outlets or magazines thriving off celebrity candidness. Because Victor doesn’t like paparazzi, had said so once, right to the face of one of them after years of being tormented by them. It’s what the papers tried to call _ice cold savagery from seventeen-year-old ice prince_ the next day, but it hadn’t done a thing to Victor’s reputation.

Rather, to receive one of those knife-sharp smiles instead, decidedly unworthy of Victor’s attention for longer than the five seconds it takes to spread his lips like a viper with poison preparing to strike—it’s like receiving a death sentence in the sports journalism world.

-

“ _Oh_ , I am so _tired_.”

It’s accompanied by a long and drawn out sigh, the likes of which Victor has perfected to be both sympathetic and hopelessly attractive in every way. For he really does seem tired, physically and mentally and emotionally and any other possible way he could be after such a difficult skate, but his spoken exhaustion is also a crafted excuse to lay his head on what he insists is a very soft pillow—a.k.a. Yuuri’s thighs.

“I’m not a pillow,” Yuuri tries to reiterate, used to it but also well aware of how weird this is. But perhaps it doesn’t come across quite as effectively as he would like it to. It can’t be that comfortable, Yuuri’s mentioned this before, but Victor keeps insisting his legs are a dream, which isn’t at all convincing when Victor’s own legs are… are so toned themselves and…

Yuuri places his camera down in punishment, a Canon DSLR, gently onto the forehead of Victor Nikiforov who is currently pretending like he’s able to actually snooze away while lying length-wise on the bleachers with such loud commentary from the overhead announcers. It’s a good thing Yuuri has the strap hanging around his neck when Victor’s hand tries to swat blindly at him.

“I’m not a table,” he whines.

“I’m not a pillow,” Yuuri points out again.

“Oh, you say that too much, _my Yuuri_.” He elongates both the _my_ and Yuuri’s name, putting emphasis where he shouldn’t.

Yuuri has to close his eyes, brace himself before letting the heat rise up through him to hopefully disperse out of the appropriate areas. His voice comes out pleading, “Victor… you know, you can’t just… people can _see_ us, you know, they’re _watching_ us… So, there’s that, but when you say things, things like that, it gives the wrong impression—”

“Let them think what they think,” Victor replies far too carelessly.

“We can’t!”

“And why not?”

Yuuri’s almost floundering for the right words. “Because—you work for years and years, being perfectly poised and elegant and to just, with me—”

He can’t help the sigh that comes out out him.

But Victor only bristles, not having any of it. “I am lying down very _elegantly_ on your lap. I don’t see any problem in that.” He seems to make himself even more comfortable on the bench and Yuuri’s lap.

There are plenty of people around, but they don’t seem to notice the two of them, or care much for that matter, or maybe they’re pretending not to. They’re in a relatively empty section of the audience anyway, _but still_.

Yuuri doesn’t know what he did to deserve any of this. Victor has lush heart-shaped pillows made of hand-sewn silk thrown on the ice after his every performance, and if he so wished it he could gather them all up, or have some other willing assistant gather them up for him, to make a bed of pillows at the kiss and cry to sleep in.

But Victor will keep giving excuses like he’s here keeping Yuuri company and to ask about his comparatively unexciting life. He never actually says it’s unexciting, tries to make it seem like it isn’t to justify spending time with Yuuri, but really there’s nothing exciting about the life of a hobbyist photographer to someone who’s living the very life he documents.

“How’s the blog going?” Victor asks right on time, feeling for the camera that’s still sitting on his head, tapping a finger lightly at it as if it reinforces his curiosity. He keeps his eyes closed, like it’s more productive of him to try and half-sleep while maintaining a conversation at the same time.

“It’s going,” Yuuri answers, carefully prying Victor’s hand off the very expensive lens, but then only ends up awkwardly holding Victor’s hand in his own in midair, unsure what to do with it now.

As if sensing the strange hovering, Victor guides their hands down to his chest, and Yuuri doesn’t let go. For some reason.

“Are you giving the people what they want?” Victor continues, playful.

“I sure am.”

“What did they think, hm? About, you know, the whole…”

“Overall? I think they liked it.”

The camera is left to balance itself on Victor’s very stable forehead so Yuuri can drop his fingers down to smooth over the strands of Victor’s hair, enjoying petting him a little even though there's a feeling he can’t quite describe when the strands can only go so far before falling from his fingertips. He scrunches Victor's hair loosely while his other hand remains its hold on Victor’s like it's an anchor to ground him, or both of them, during this time.

“Granted, change is hard for some,” Yuuri says. “A lot of them did think it a tragedy. That you made a mistake. That you lost some ethereal magic in your attempt to grow up from your more childish image. Your long hair was what first made them fall in love with you and your skating and seeing it gone so suddenly is like a stab to the—”

Victor cuts him off, “I meant your followers. What did they think?”

“I'm... talking about them… that's what they think.”

“Oh…?”

Victor has that well-worn smile on, even when his eyes are still closed. His thumb rubs at the back of Yuuri’s palm, slow and light enough that he doesn’t think Yuuri will notice but of course he does anyway. It really is warm when the cold air off the ice circulates around them.

“How many of them fell in love with me because of my hair, would you say?” Victor hums, and it reverberates all the way through his chest to Yuuri’s fingertips.

“How many? Probably all of them.”

“Uh huh. I see. And tell me, when did _you_ first fall in love with me because of my hair, would you say?”

He says it so nonchalantly.

The hand threading through Victor’s hair falls completely away then as Yuuri splutters, feeling himself warm so quickly he becomes a little lightheaded, but Victor’s hold on his other hand remains firm and tight, not letting him get away.

And Victor’s head, his soft sleepy-prince head, won’t budge from his lap.

“ _That is_ … that’s not…”

“Oh, Yuuri, you’re so cute.” He holds back a laugh, failingly so, and Yuuri pulls at his lip, entranced once more.

It isn’t fair the way Victor does this, because he knows he’s perfect and beautiful and the main subject matter of Yuuri’s blog. He understands that only so much of himself can be shown through interviews and TV show segments meant to humanize him, so he tries to make his skating at least the second most valid and accurate representation of himself. He has Yuuri take the most honest pictures of him doing the most mundane things, posting them online independently, because he doesn’t trust anyone else to do so.

But no matter how much money Yuuri dishes out on new cameras and better lenses and online photography classes, there’ll always be a gap between what his camera sees and what’s actually in front of it, between what people see in a photo and seeing Victor in person.

He can’t capture everything Victor is. There’s no way he can adequately relay things like what it feels like to run his hands through Victor’s hair now, after the panicked confusion Yuuri felt when Victor suddenly showed up in front of him at this year’s Senior Grand Prix, dragging him to his luxury suite hotel room across the street, and ordering Yuuri to watch carefully as he piles all his hair in one hand and takes a pair of scissors to it.

“What are you doing?!” Yuuri had nearly screamed.

“Take a picture of me,” is all Victor said, eerily calm.

He doesn’t know why Victor chose him, why Victor keeps letting Yuuri in on these intimate moments before anyone else.

But it’s these things that first propels Yuuri’s blog out of internet obscurity, now frequently becoming the primary source at the bottom of sports and celebrity pages of very real legitimate news articles.

Their relationship is a topic of speculation by both mainstream media and fans alike. Victor remains annoyingly ambiguous whenever he’s asked; Yuuri denies as often as he can, at one point stating he’s more of a glorified personal assistant than anything. It’s complicated, Victor says. Yuuri doesn’t actually get paid for his services, no, at least not by Victor himself. He does invite Yuuri up to his room on occasion, use your imagination, please, Victor says with a smile.

Cutting off one’s hair is a sign of entering a new stage in life. It’s personal growth, more mental and emotional than physical. To have Yuuri present at such an important moment—surely, that has to mean something? Yuuri wonders about that himself.

There is absolutely nothing Yuuri can say that would make clear the rumours and speculation already swirling around the two of them for years now. So, he captions the photo that will change the current course of the skating world with a single line explaining nothing more, nothing less, than what’s already clear from the picture.

Victor can’t wait to see you all again.

Yuuri can still feel it between his fingers, even now, the remnants of Victor’s once long hair after Victor had essentially handed him the ponytail of scraps to cry over before chucking it cruelly in the bin.

He even had Yuuri be the one to even out the ends once everything was over and done with. If Yuuri had a job description, this certainly wasn’t in it.

With regards to their relationship and what they mean to one another, at what point does ambiguity become deliberate inclination towards one answer?

Victor, please answer this simple question.

When Victor takes Yuuri’s camera off his forehead, there’s a red indented mark left behind. He spins the camera around so he can look through it, tilting his head to point the camera upwards from where he’s still lying down. He's going to take a picture of the most unflattering angle he possibly could of Yuuri.

It has Yuuri pursing his lips, gripping the tiniest portion of Victor's jacket between his thumb and index finger.

After clicking the button with a beep and looking at it, Victor seems satisfied.

“Wow, such a good face,” Victor remarks, smiling, turning to show Yuuri the last shot on the screen. Yuuri’s chin looks disgraceful. “I think my photography skills right now are at the level that you were five years ago.”

Is that a diss on Victor or Yuuri?

“Delete that, Victor…” Yuuri puts a hand to his face in shame, still trying to recover from the last comment Victor made about falling in love with him, and this isn’t helping. At all. “You’re killing me, you know that?”

“I know. But before I delete it, can you send it to me? I think you look positively ravishing.”

“No.”

“Please? Pretty please?”

“Buy your own camera and then you can do whatever you want with it.”

Victor’s mouth pulls itself into a pout, as if saying he doesn't need to do such a thing when he has Yuuri. He smiles a little, turning back to the camera, muttering under his breath, “Just accept that you're handsome,” as if he doesn’t think Yuuri will hear despite being so close, as if it's a long-running vendetta that Victor's determined to make Yuuri acknowledge one way or another. If it's the last thing he ever does.

Yuuri hears him, of course.

And he completely ignores it.

It’s still probably the reason why he lets Victor scroll through all the photos Yuuri took that day though, mostly consisting of Victor’s free skate but there are some of other skaters that he felt obligated to compile. And Victor flips through them all wordlessly, concentrating rather hard on them, a little like it’s a performance review to determine if Yuuri’s still worth keeping on as his personal photographer.

Occasionally, he’ll stop on an image of himself, really focusing on it, one where he believes his face or his body is especially expressive. Yuuri can’t actually see the ones he stops on from this angle, Victor’s head shifting along with every approving nod he does, but he knows this is a thing Victor usually does. This is more like Victor’s own personal performance review, to determine if his skate is worth the praise of its biggest critic—himself.

They’re both well aware of how this all looks, lying atop each other, what their relationship looks like, how they act and are perceived by everybody. It’s not calculated, but there’s a certain degree of maneuvering.

And it’s not something that Yuuri chose, rather something that he'd fallen into, not against his will but against adequate foresight. And not regretful at all, no, just—strange. It’s a little like how Yuuri can’t control how people look or what they do, he can only choose the moment to capture their image. There's a degree of control until a certain point where it's better to understand and accept that sometimes the stars aren't perfectly in alignment. And like how Victor is the one who worked hard to be skating genius, instead of letting the genius do all the work, Victor’s the one who chooses his own destiny.

It has Yuuri feeling just a little bit envious.

“Yuuri…”

He glances down, doesn’t notice until now that Victor is no longer looking through his camera, instead having it sitting comfortably on his chest.

He doesn't do this often, toy with an idea until it eats at him, Yuuri can see it as much, plainly on Victor's face. Through the straps of his camera still around his neck, Victor has an unreadable expression, seeming to take a slow, careful intake of breath that he tries to steady, remaining casual, but consuming the space between them. 

“Yuuri, after this,” he tries, ill-prepared, “do you want to… I dunno, go out to get a bite to eat or something… if you want. To. With me—?”

Yuuri's silent.

Huh?

He doesn't say that out loud.

"Like a... sort of a..."

Victor’s cut off by a loud ringing that sounds from his pocket.

It scares both of them nearly out of their seats. Yuuri feels tilted, frowning unpleasantly, thrown completely out of orbit. It’s almost comical, the way it has both their shoulders falling, Yuuri’s especially. The moment is broken, whatever moment it was. If there was even anything there.

Already, Victor’s letting go of his hand to sit up, replacing the spot on Yuuri’s lap with the camera.

Victor takes out his phone and looks at it. “Sorry. Shit. Right now—seriously?” He stares at the screen, as if second-guessing whether or not he should actually answer it. He looks back sympathetically at Yuuri. “Sorry, forget that. If I don’t take this, he’s going to keep, you know...”

“It’s fine. Go ahead.”

Yuuri tries not to take Victor's expression as disappointment with his answer, that if Yuuri had said anything else he would gladly deny the call. But with a sigh, he ends up answering it.

“Hello? Yakov?”

Once Victor is standing up, back turned, Yuuri has to put a hand to his face, sliding over the side of his cheek to the front of his neck, feeling his skin pulsating. Victor mirrors the same movement, having a hand rub tentative at the back of his neck.

“What? No, I’m with Yuuri.”

Yuuri can’t help but think that’s not—that wasn’t anything. Was it? It’s nothing unusual. This is how they always are. He's been staying up too late reading media articles about when Victor plans on settling down (with Yuuri) or what he was doing loitering so close to a Barcelona jewelry store (buying a ring for Yuuri), as if speculating about something happening will make it actually happen. So, why does Yuuri have to feel like, like he wants so badly to...

“I was sleeping with Yuuri. What more do you want?”

Yuuri’s suddenly choking in his seat, shooting a hand out to grab the edge of Victor’s jacket. “ _No_ —Victor. That’s not—don’t say it like that! Victor, he’ll misunderstand!” He can already hear the staticked questions yelling through the phone.

Victor glances back, giving Yuuri a wink and a knowing half-smile. “Sorry, my English is bad.”

Despite everything, Victor saying that to him still feels so betrayingly comforting. He’s not sure if Victor is speaking to him or Yakov or to both of them at the same time. But then again, he’s not sure if it really matters either way.

-

When Victor moans beneath him, Yuuri’s first thought to himself is, _goddammit, we're proving them all right_.

But it seems far too late for that, especially when he has Victor like this out in front of him, pliant and willing for him.

Victor’s face is splotched red, all the way down his neck, right down his chest. Victor is a chest-blusher, that much Yuuri has established. His lips are puffy and parted, as Yuuri’s sure his own are as well, tiny sparkled tears lining the underside of Victor’s eyelids.

And his hair—splayed out and messy against the pillow.

All of it has Yuuri’s heart racing.

“You know, you look lovely when you cry,” Yuuri breathes, one hand skirting over the hard lines of Victor’s bare chest, achingly hot to the touch. “Sorry for saying that.”

His other hand works to snap another picture, and another, and another, in rapid succession, of Victor’s face. Yuuri is so grateful for the convenience of the iPhone, fitting easily into the palm of his hand, it doesn’t take much effort at all, and he can look back at these stunning photos any time he wants right from his back pocket. They might be a bit messy, a bit dark, for Yuuri’s standards, but Victor tends to look good no matter what bad lighting he’s under.

Victor’s hands are fisted, grasping at the pillow his head rests on. He turns his face to the side, as if to spite Yuuri for saying and even thinking all that, but he only ends up staring back sultrily into the camera, lips parting further, eyes fluttering. He’s a total natural.

“Yuuri, Yuuri…” he’s almost chanting, “who knew you had this sort of kink…?” He smiles, tilts his chin up, revelling in the limelight.

“Shouldn’t it have been obvious?”

When Yuuri’s thighs squeeze either side of Victor’s hips, Victor lets out another high-pitched whine.

His breath comes out strained. “...I don’t judge.”

“Maybe I want to be judged.”

“ _Yuuri_.”

For some reason that has Victor bucking up slightly, at least where he can while Yuuri keeps pressing him down into the bed.

The air fills with the sound of the digital shutter clicking over and over again along with Victor’s thin panting and little gasps every time Yuuri so much as rocks against him. Victor's irresistible, and every time he gets out of frame Yuuri will switch to landscape mode, just to keep things interesting.

He doesn’t worry about zooming in or out. He doesn’t worry about focus or colour saturation or overexposure. These photos aren’t for anyone else’s eyes to see but Yuuri’s. No one else gets the privilege of seeing Victor like this, skin sheened with a layer of sweat, so blisteringly honest—when it’s just the two of them alone like this and Victor can simply let himself go.

“Open your eyes, darling,” Yuuri says in the most soothing voice he can, patting a chastising hand to Victor’s cheek. “Keep your eyes on me. Can you do that for me, Victor?”

“Yes…”

Yuuri licks his lips. “Good, so good to me.”

It really doesn’t take much at all to fill up Yuuri’s entire camera roll nor to get Victor so riled up by doing nearly nothing.

Victor opens his eyes just slightly, just enough to let Yuuri settle in them. Even after all these years, Victor has remained kind and his skating is still a sight to behold. Yuuri’s stance remains as firm as it’s been since the beginning: Victor’s artistry can’t be captured by anyone, can be attempted but not replicated.

So, that’s what Yuuri will do. He’ll give as many attempts as it’s possible for him to, whether that’s through a professional grade camera costing him a steep $1,199 or a disposable made of paper and plastic or a smartphone that he can whip out at a moment’s notice to snap a picture of Victor before he can notice.

Off camera, Victor isn’t perfect. A lot of aspects of him, whether good or bad, can’t be captured on film, like how he mispronounces certain words that Yuuri has told him over and over again how to pronounce properly or how he can’t find the right words to say at all and will leave a sentence hanging with the Russian equivalent without correcting it. He’ll insist time and time again that his skating is the best part of him and the only thing that’s really worthwhile about him, but Yuuri will disagree every time.

But then again, that’s not too different from Victor disagreeing whenever Yuuri insists his photography is wholly dependent on someone or something else, that he has little to nothing to do with how good it’ll turn out, and if need be he’s always entirely replaceable. Victor had actually grown so angry with him one time for saying that while they were in public, they’d nearly caused a disturbance.

Why then, if Yuuri is so easily replaceable, does Victor look at Yuuri's photos and feel so much? Why then does he yearn to travel the world all over again, see things from Yuuri's perspective, feeling more than what he could ever possibly achieve on his own?

So, they’ll settle for somewhere in the middle. Somewhere where they can both be happy, fitting neatly into each other the way a couple should, a normal couple that simply happens to skate and photograph each other and hightail it from the media sometimes.

“You’re so beautiful,” Yuuri whispers, letting the tips of his fingers get in the shot to brush against Victor’s jawbone, pushing a thumb against Victor’s bottom lip, working it gently until Victor can’t help flicking his tongue out and practically sucking him in.

“Yuuri, please…”

“I didn’t get to tell you before and I regret it a lot.” Yuuri bites his lip, smiling crookedly. "I've wanted to say that you were beautiful. All the time."

Another click. And another.

Though, it's unclear if Victor is really listening. He closes his eyes once more, grasping Yuuri’s wrist to bring his knuckles up against his lips, open and wet. Yuuri can feel him shivering, breath coming out in short puffs, his eyes glassy in that way that gets Yuuri every single time.

"Even after I cut my hair?" Victor says, dragging Yuuri's hand up to breathe against his wrist.

"Especially."

"Really?"

Yuuri thinks for a second. "Well, I never thought love at second sight was a thing but..."

Victor inhales sharply, a noise that's less of a gasp and more something so wanton. He's so inexplicably taken by Yuuri. And Yuuri would be embarrassed for saying that if he were in any other mind frame, but he gets such a rush, feeling much more himself right now than at any other point in his life, and Victor doesn't seem to mind the development at all; rather, seems to indulge himself in something as simple as being able to give himself over to Yuuri.

His eyes darken, piercing Yuuri's, like he can't help letting restraint go. He wouldn't do this with anyone else. Won't choose anyone else but Yuuri.

In the next moment, Victor calls his name again, and again once more, tasting it on his lips, just because he can. He raises his other arm in the air, stroking a finger to Yuuri's hand, says, “Put the phone down and…”

The backside of Yuuri’s palm with the phone in it moves softly against Victor’s cheek just to see Victor lean desperately into his touch, skin hot, hand clenched against the upper part of Yuuri’s thigh trying to coax him forward.

Victor can't help so lovingly pleading, “...Kiss me, please.”

His back is at a slight arch, so gorgeous.

And Yuuri can’t resist any longer, either.

He’ll gladly throw his phone to some other part of the bed, forgetting about it in order to lean forward and kiss Victor deeply. Victor’s lips swim around his, tongue lapping through to the inside of his mouth so greedily, hand coming up to squeeze the back of Yuuri’s neck in something so tender, just to bring him in closer, like they’re making up for all the lost time they spent wondering if they should or shouldn't after everyone's been saying they have been for the better part of the last ten years. Yuuri's hand runs through the front of Victor's hair, pushing his bangs up and out of his face.

The sigh he makes into Victor's lips has him feeling drunk.

When Yuuri pulls off of him, and with Victor’s head a little bit clearer after getting what he's wanted, Victor brings a hand up to his face, caressing the soft of Yuuri's cheek. He actually laughs a bit, drawing out the words, “I know. You never had to say it, I’d always, could always tell. With the way you—you always looked at me, I thought is that the way I look at you too…”

And Yuuri will cut him off right there with another kiss, unflinchingly, not letting him finish. With his heart feeling so full, fingers laced so sweetly through Victor’s, sometimes it’s far more embarrassing to let Victor finish his sentence.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm actually quite sad that i didn't get to make use of polaroids. ah, just know at one point in their relationship yuuri did use polaroid cameras


End file.
